Читать книгу African-Language Literatures - Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi - Страница 7

African-language literatures cover a wide range of black South African literatures in different languages; Khoi and San languages and literatures (which have been precluded and remain excluded in formal studies of African-language literatures), isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiNdebele, SiSwati, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana, Xitsonga and Tshivenda. Each of these language categories has its own, but not necessarily distinct, language-bound literary system: a structure which follows the apartheid policy of separate development. The paralysing effect of this arrangement is that African-language literatures remain incapable of realising themselves as, or of achieving a status of, pan-ethnic or national literature. These literatures have been overtaken in this regard by various popular art forms such as music, theatre, film and television which were initially conceptualised within a discourse of control under apartheid but have since outstripped these constricting boundaries to articulate an inclusively popular African culture. Yet, in profound ways, these African-language literatures represent the truest and most uninterrupted forms of black expressive art in South Africa. The processes developed for the production of these literatures from their conceptualisation, writing, the feedback systems authors established and the discourse drawn on are wholly and unabashedly African. This contrasts with the production of theatre, music and television where there is often collaboration between different races, with the problems attendant on that, as well as those caused by the politics of production. In the production of African-language literatures only the publishing sector represents interests outside African cultural interests. However, this sector still remains the major contributor to the low status and negative perceptions suffered by this literary tradition (Evans and Seeber, 2000).

This brief description of the broad spectrum covered by the African-language literatures field indicates that, within the confines of this book, it is impractical for an in-depth analysis of art forms comprising all the different language literatures embraced by this term. Therefore this book will concentrate mainly on isiZulu-language literature and black television dramas as microcosmic reflections of the imperatives encapsulated in the popular discourse of Africans, despite ethnic and linguistic differences. These art forms further provide a fascinating terrain in which extra-textuality, dynamism, multivocality and the interaction of genres operating within particular contexts can be examined.

The isiZulu language as medium of communication between various ethnicities adequately reflects the multi-layered concerns and issues prevailing in the popular imagination compared to other South African indigenous languages. Out of the 50 million legal and illegal citizens comprising the South African population, indigenous South African languages are spoken by almost 77 per cent of the population. The other 23 per cent comprise speakers of English, Afrikaans, a number of minor languages such as modern European, Indian and a host of other foreign African languages that have come to add to the linguistic mix of South Africa’s post-apartheid society (Kamwangamalu, 2004). The isiZulu language is spoken by approximately 15 million people in its heartland which is KwaZulu-Natal. It also dominates the linguistic terrain of Africans in the Gauteng province, South Africa’s economic hub, and it is spoken fairly widely in other major provinces such as Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and in some parts of the Free State, especially in areas bordering Zululand (Pansalb, 2000). As most black South Africans are bilingual or multilingual, isiZulu is one of the languages often spoken by them. The dominance of this language is attributed to a number of social variables that characterised the pre-colonial, colonial and the apartheid periods. The isiZulu language is also part of the Nguni family and therefore has mutual intelligibility with isiXhosa, isiNdebele and SiSwati. Furthermore, intermarriages between differing ethnicities, migrant labour, and the historical displacement of Zulu people through the Mfecane wars in pre-colonial times spread this language variety across a wide terrain. Its varieties, namely Zimbabwean Ndebele and Ngoni, are spoken respectively in Zimbabwe and in some parts of Malawi.